The present invention relates to an electronic percussion musical instrument which has striking pads (i.e. music playing pads) and generates percussion musical tones when the pads are struck by the player, and more particularly to such an instrument in which timbres of musical tones are allocated to the striking pads, respectively. For a striking pad, a sequence of different timbres aligned in an order are set to present a pad chain performance in which plural strikes in succession onto the same striking pad will cause the generation of musical tones in the timbres as designated by the sequence and in the order of timbre in the sequence.
Known in the art are such electronic percussion musical instruments which have music playing manipulation elements in the form of a pad (i.e. playing pads) to be struck by the player and generate electronic musical tones resembling drum sounds and cymbal sounds when the pads are struck, such as disclosed in registered Japanese patent publications No. 3,835,163 and No. 3,554,770. Such electronic percussion instruments having pad-type music playing manipulation elements are capable of generating individual musical tones or a short phrase of musical tones when the pads are struck by the sticks or hands or other body parts.
Such known electronic percussion instruments are provided with a plurality of playing pads. Mostly in such an electronic percussion instrument, only one timbre of musical tone is allocated to each of the playing pads. However there some electronic percussion instruments in which several timbres of musical tones are allocated to at least one of the playing pads, and successive strikes onto the same playing pad will cause the generation of musical tones in such allocated timbres in turns in a predetermined order. With such an electronic percussion instrument, when one pad is struck in succession, a different tone will be produced for every strike, and a wide variety of percussion instrument performance will be realized with an enhanced musical expression. In a conventional instrument of such a type, however, only those musical tones that are allocated to the struck pad can be generated, even though a plural timbres are allocated to one pad, and consequently the successive strikes onto one pad cannot permit the generation of tones in the timbre which is allocated to another pad (and not to the struck pad) to realize the tone generation in a wide range of timbres.